Consultant: Cleveland airport’s loss is Youngstown’s gain

February 10, 2014 at 7:06p.m.

VIENNA

An aviation consultant to the Youngstown Warren Regional Airport, who predicted more than three years ago that Hopkins International Airport in Cleveland might lose its hub status, said Monday Cleveland’s loss could be the Mahoning Valley’s gain.

“When you hear news about the Cleveland hub closure, although it’s not good for the city of Cleveland — losing an airline hub has a lot of negative connotations — it creates opportunities for the Mahoning Valley that we didn’t have before,” said Tom Reich, president of Air Service Partners of Alexandria, Va.

United Airlines announced last week that Cleveland would no longer be a hub airport, meaning United would no longer use the airport to connect passengers to airports around the world and would reduce its flights from 199 to 72 by June.

Reich said airlines have shown a “wait-and-see attitude” as to whether to start daily air service at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport, but that is changing now that the Cleveland announcement has occurred.

He said the loss of the Cleveland hub takes away one of the biggest arguments the airlines have made in the past for why they wouldn’t give Youngstown-Warren daily flights to a hub airport in Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Chicago.

“Now we can say people in the Mahoning Valley are going to be less likely to drive to Cleveland six months from now than they are today,” Reich said.

“As we continue to have conversations with these carriers, we’re hoping that in the next six months to a year, we have an announcement to make and that the Small Communities Air Service grant that the airport was awarded will be used to support that daily air service.”

The grant of $780,000 came from the Federal Aviation Administration to provide part of a $1.2 million revenue guarantee airport officials think would get an airline to start daily air service. The money would be used to ensure that the airline didn’t lose money during the start-up phase.